Landlords and other property owners who break the law by failing to regularly clean water tanks are escaping prosecution, despite concerns about the risk to public health posed by Bermuda’s rainwater catchment system.

Government admitted yesterday that no one has ever been prosecuted for not cleaning a tank under the Public Health (Water Storage) Regulations 1951, even though the law requires tanks to be cleaned every six years and allows for suspected offenders to be taken to court and fined if convicted.

Public health officers have the power to order a tank to be cleaned but the Department of Health said when water is tested and found to be unsuitable for drinking, it gives only verbal or written “advice” to the property owner to clean then chlorinate, if the tank hasn’t been cleaned for more than six years or looks dirty.

A spokeswoman said: “When cleaning and chlorination is completed, then a sample may be resubmitted for retesting. In the past, we have not had to use a formal notice to achieve this result.”

Bermuda Environmental and Sustainability Taskforce (BEST) insisted last night that better enforcement of the law was needed if the Island was to continue relying on its traditional roof catchment system for the majority of its freshwater supply.

BEST founder Stuart Hayward said: “While the regulations do require that tanks be cleaned and sludge removed at least every six years, the mechanisms for tracking and enforcing the regulations are less than efficient.

“It is difficult to imagine an efficient bureaucracy that could track and enforce this regulation effectively.”

He said the public needed to understand that excessive sediment and the failure to regularly clean tanks could promote the breeding of unhealthy bacteria and cause an accumulation of contaminants such as metals and petroleum hydrocarbons that can pose health risks.

It can cost several hundred dollars to get a medium-sized tank professionally cleaned.

Mr Hayward said: “We would not be surprised to find that people will be put off cleaning their tank for years or decades because of the cost of the cleaning and replacing the water.

“The only way to ensure tanks get cleaned, particularly with landlords, is to have greater enforcement of the law.”

He added: “A public education campaign would be useful on the reasons to have tank water tested and to clean tanks, and the best ways to disinfect tanks between cleanings.

“People need to be mindful of testing their water regularly and using some form of disinfection if there is any indication of unhealthy bacteria.

“However, they need to know that adding chlorine when there is a lot of accumulated sediment can cause the creation of cancer-causing chemicals. They cannot rely on just disinfecting the tank — the sediment needs to be removed regularly as well.”

He said the Island’s system of collecting and conserving water in individual catchments had several advantages, including that it encouraged people to moderate their water use and lessened the chances of a water-borne infection affecting many due to a piped-in system.

But he added that a disadvantage was the exposure of the collective water supply to air-borne pollutants, such as “acid rain from a distance, road dirt, vehicle exhausts and emissions from plants like Belco and the Tynes Bay Incinerator”.

Mr Hayward said: “It wouldn’t hurt for the Government to perform a water supply ‘audit’ to examine our current system and look at alternatives.”

The issue of tank water safety hit the headlines this week after the parents of a baby girl who doctors believe was made sick due to contaminated water urged Government to rigorously enforce the six-year rule so other families don’t suffer.

Asked if anyone had ever been prosecuted under the regulations, a Department of Health spokeswoman told The Royal Gazette yesterday: “No.”

She added: “But compliance activities, advice and education are applied with stakeholders daily to collaboratively achieve improvements.”

The spokeswoman said members of the public could get their water tested by Environmental Health for “all of the standard bacterial indicators — coliforms, faecal coliforms and E. coli, which are proxy indicators for the risk of pathogenic [disease-causing] organisms”.

She said when water was found to be unsuitable for drinking at a property, follow-up samples were taken after advice was given to the occupants about water safety — though this newspaper is aware of at least once instance last year when an unacceptable result did not result in any request for follow-up samples.

The spokeswoman said: “One of the first questions asked when poor results are received would be whether the tank has been cleaned within the past six years. Dependent on where the property in question is located, more frequent tank cleaning may be required.”

The spokeswoman said it was important to remember that water test results indicated the water quality for a particular sample, taken on a particular day, and that microbiological flora could fluctuate with every rainfall.

We reported yesterday that a study of 140 household tanks was conducted last year by government and overseas scientists, the results of which are expected to be published later this year.

A similar study done ten years ago by the same team found that “while rainwater collection from rooftops is a simple, efficient and cost effective procedure for the provision of freshwater supplies to individual households, it may represent a risk to human health if used for drinking.”